Contact centers are typically used to send a call (e.g., a single voice media) to a particular agent or resource. In most contact centers, a call may be sent to a single agent, and that agent must either answer the call, or “time out” (e.g., when that agent is not available). For a time out situation, the call may be re-queued, and then sent to a next available agent.
When applying such a conventional contact center approach to “knowledge” workers, such as those who may not be required to rigorously answer calls like typical agents, this approach can lead to long wait times. Worse yet, when using technologies, such as presence from instant messaging (IM) clients to report a state of potential resources to the contact center, input data may be flawed or stale, thus creating an undesirable user experience.